Chapter Two
A Love that is not Gentle
The OtherWorld
There’s no moon tonight.
“Now, that’s poetic,” I mumble to myself as I walk through the courtyard toward Clerical Accommodations.
The sky above the OtherWorld is a perpetual void. Black and starless, a canvas of nothing that stretches endlessly. Usually, there’s a moon. That massive cosmic sphere hangs like a watchful eye, casting its cold light across the black towers and walkways.
Tonight? Nothing. Just darkness.
There hasn’t been a time without the moon in this realm or the mortal one since I helped Rue cross.
The thought arrives unbidden, dragging with it the weight of that night.
Rue’s stubbornness, her fear, her eventual bravery. The way she looked at me on that rooftop, rain-soaked and dying, still haunts me. The steel in her blue-grey eyes lingers in my mind. Everything we said and all we left unsaid.
And now Rue is gone. She’s crossed over and lost to whatever corner of the OtherWorld the Weaver Sisters buried her in.
The Bliss, The Nothing … that’s above my pay grade.
All I know is that she’s gone. In the OtherWorld, no one finds anyone who holds a piece of their mortal heart. Those are the rules.
And Kane is broken because of it. That’s why I’m here.
Those thoughts give rise to even more deeply buried memories.
Maddy’s bullheadedness, her resilience in the face of our insurmountable odds. The strength she showed me in every attempt to make space for our love in a world that had no interest in making room for it.
Her golden hair glistening in the sunlight.
The way she’d tilt her chin when she was being defiant.
The small furrow that appeared between her brows right before she said something she knew would get her in trouble, causing her blue eyes to glint and her rounded lips to turn upward in challenge.
The sound of her laugh—bright, unrestrained, utterly fearless, just like her.
“I’d give it all up for a life, any life, with you.”
I pause mid-step to suppress the memory.
Not because I don’t want the reminder. On the contrary, I wish all my moments were filled with nothing but those stolen minutes with my love.
But circumstance had a different story to tell.
Our love never had a chance to take flight.
And I can’t, no matter how much I want to, be buried with memories of her.
The universe decided we didn’t get our happily ever after. That boys like me didn’t get to keep girls like her. It was decided that love was too dangerous to let live.
So, it killed that love. Killed us. Burned me alive and forced her to live a life with him.
I shake my head and will myself to move, to bury the past and leave it behind.
Ignore. Bury. Repress. I do what I can to leave the past where it belongs.
I can’t change it now, and the OtherWorld order makes no room for memories of our mortal days.
Memories are dangerous here. They can intoxicate and consume.
They can make you forget your purpose or your place in the great machinery of death.
If we lose our ability to serve, we become useless to the system, and then we are disposed of. Properly.
My thoughts flash to the screams and cries of the souls sent to The Nothing at Big D’s Devilishly Deviant Dress-Up Dance.
I’ve witnessed souls being escorted to The Nothing before.
I’ve seen them bend and break before vanishing into that endless void of silence and memory, with no escape, no reprieve, and no end.
I shudder and begin to move again, attempting to free my mind of those nasty thoughts.
Or at least I try to anyway.
Funny how unwelcome thoughts don’t ask for permission before entering. The buggers just arrive, march in uninvited, and take up space. They make themselves comfortable in the holes I’ve been trying to fill for countless moons.
I make my way across the vacant expanse of drab nothingness that serves as the common housing area for those tasked with keeping OtherWorld records.
Clerical Accommodations.
The name makes it sound almost dignified, like those who stay here can choose their furnishings and finishes.
The truth is, almost no one chooses Clerical.
Some seek the mindlessness it offers. Reapers find themselves here because they fucked up and lost their blade.
Kane is here because he snapped. Loving Rue cost him his eternal purpose.
But love can make you rethink purpose; it makes its own compass.
There’s no true north in Clerical, though. There’s no direction at all.
So, this is where he stays, left in a place that smells somehow both too clean and sour.
I arrive at Kane’s room, which is indistinguishable from every other domicile in this building.
As reapers, we have an identity and manage to retain some of our personality.
But here, in Clerical, denizens of the OtherWorld are reduced to nothing more than a number.
I read the ones affixed to the door—0 9 0 9.
He may be a number here, but he’s still Kane Deveraux to me.
I open the door without knocking and take in the drab sameness of the space. All the colors are shades of beige. Beige walls, floor, and ceiling. A beige bed that looks like it has never been slept in. Against the wall sits a tiny desk and chair, which is somehow a different shade of beige.
It suffocates me just to look at it.
Two items in the room break up the monotony, two splashes of color and life that I snuck in for Kane: Rue’s necklace and her goofy bunny slippers.
My disheveled appearance doesn’t hold a candle to the man in front of me.
Kane sits in the chair, staring at the wall. His usually irritatingly immaculate appearance has degraded into something I barely recognize. His dark hair is unkempt, falling into his face instead of pulled back in its traditional neat style.
The form stays the same, but something changes when love leaves the soul. It’s unmistakable.
I would know.
“You look like death.”
Kane smiles. Almost. “Fitting.”
I step inside. Close the door. “You haven’t checked in for eight days.”
“I don’t have a need to check in anymore.”
“And you’ve moved into this shithole.”
“When’s the last time you minded your own business?”
“Been a couple of decades.” I cross my arms. “Talk to me.”
“About what?” Kane snaps.
“Her.”
“Don’t.”
“Ru—”
“Don’t say her name,” he grits out.
I don’t flinch. “Rue wouldn’t want this.”
He stands, grabs me by the coat, and slams me against the wall. “You don’t get to tell me what she’d want. You didn’t know her.”
“I know what love looks like, mate. When it’s been carved into someone’s bones. You can’t spend another eternity mending a broken heart. You will be on the chain with the souls refusing to forget.”
The warning is directed at Kane, but it may as well be a reminder to me. The words carry as much weight for the state I find myself in.
Because I am on that chain. I’ve been right there for over a century.
I refuse to forget my Maddy. I won’t let go, and I cling to her memory as if it were the only thing keeping me from drowning in the treacherous waters.
Yet, in this existence, her memory might be the very thing that pulls me under.
“Then so be it!” He shoves me back. “She’s crossed into oblivion.
She said, ‘Mayday,’ and I wasn’t there. I was locked in some office, forced to watch her cry for me.
And now she’s gone. I’ve been stripped of my blade, my abilities.
I can’t look for her. I’m trapped. I was supposed to be there with her. ”
That night replays in my mind, with memories hitting me as intensely as the lightning that struck that roof.
“For what it’s worth,” I eventually say, dropping into Kane’s chair, incapable of holding the weight of all that and my own body weight at the same time, “I was as gentle as possible.”
“It should’ve been me.”
Silence fills the space between us. Not empty. Just full of things neither of us wants to touch.
“I can’t feel anything,” Kane says.
I miss that sensation, I think to myself, but instead voice aloud, “Maybe that’s your mind trying to keep you going.”
“I don’t even dream about her anymore.”
I exhale slowly. “Maybe that’s your soul trying to remember how to carry on without her.”
“I don’t want to go on like this.”
“Then don’t.”
Kane looks at me.
“Do something,” I say. “Go to your home. Go to D and demand your job back. Fuck, come with me to Catastrophes and get that anger out. But stop sitting here, waiting to disintegrate. You’re Kane Deveraux.
Don’t vanish.” I remind him of his worth with as much enthusiasm as I can muster, thinking of the fading numbers outside his door.
“I’ve already started.”
“Bullshit.” I scoff.
“I held her! I—I loved her.”
“And you think that’s where she ends?”
He doesn’t answer.
I stand, walk to the door. “Love never ends, Kane. It’s the only thing more enduring than death. That doesn’t vanish just because she did.”
“I don’t know.”
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “You do. And here’s something else to think on. How would she feel, knowing you’re using her memory this way?”
The door closes behind me with a soft click.
I turn my chest toward the door and run my fingers along the numbers that set his space apart from the countless others lining this hallway. The silence is broken by the sound of my footsteps as I walk down the corridor and back outside.
The moon has returned, a tiny sliver that brings light and serves as a gentle reminder that Time continues her bending, twisting dance, even here in the OtherWorld.
The same sliver of moon was present the first night I spent with Maddy. The thought, along with the ensuing heartache from my past, rushes to me, unbidden and very unwelcome.
England, 1868
I’m alone in the forge when I hear the creak of the door.
It’s late enough that Master Toller has gone home, and the other apprentices have scattered to their various lodgings. It’s just me and the dying embers of the day’s fire, with cooling metal waiting to be worked on tomorrow.